Instructions on Breathing

It does seem easy, doesn’t it? They say it’s mere instinct. They being, of course, the scientists and the doctors and the mothers and the caretakers. I steal the air out of the room and into my lungs, then release the dregs of CO2 back out into space. Constant filtration. Some mornings the air is filled with a soggy residue, however, that coats my chest in layers, caving into the caverns of my respiratory system. The layers of this matte, sticky substance accrue mass with every attempted inhale so that each following breath has less room to filter. So what should one do, then, if there is less with which to hold that which is essential? I cannot take in air with my stomach, for example, as it is occupied with the task of dissolving calories. I try to breathe deeper, harder, but the struggle only makes the air tighten around my throat, constrict around my lungs, slither around and around my individual ribs and fill me. It fills me and I cannot filter the evil from this matter. What is the matter with you, they might ask. They being, of course, the passerby that let their eyes linger over my hunched body, over my sharp noise, over my desperate attempts to live to live to live to breathe to live to breathe to inhale exhale get this thing off of me, out of my body, and decide to take a different route to their destination.

What is this matter in me?

It’s just air, of course. So I must widen my nostrils and sometimes my mouth to let in as much as possible. I must push my belly in and squeeze out as much air as possible and hope that the humidity choking me releases as well. I must try to breathe even when it pains me, especially then, because after hundreds of harrowing breaths perhaps it will become easier. I must inhale and exhale and clasp my hands against my chest and inhale and exhale and inhale.